The Life, Times, and Work of Alfred Korzybski with Non-Aristotelian Sightings and Comments on the Passing Scene

Friday, March 6, 2009

The Passion of Knowledge

Lothar Bickel, a student of Constantin Brunner (1) wrote the following to end his wonderful book The Unity of Body and Mind. I think he was describing his teacher and himself. But the quote describes, in general terms, a central aspect of what drove Alfred Korzybski as well.

Our convictions…are, in general easily overthrown and they hold their ground only when they correspond to those vague judgments of our interests that are carried along by our drives and feelings.

The situation is different for the few whose lives are dependent upon the affirmation and negation of cognition, whose existence is centered in the ebb and tide of cognitive processes as vitally and genuinely as it is in that of feeling and volition. Their insights and judgments are powerful existential forces that can well compare with those of common drives and affects. Those men who come upon important truths of science or philosophy have no need of injecting in them the power and strength of repressed emotions in order to make them the most vital concern of their inward lives. From the very beginning the warmest blood of their lives pulsates for their truth which becomes their strongest passion from the very time it first takes root in them. This passion for truth also accounts for the stamp and fortitude of their characters. Self-acquired insights are genuine activities of life-maintainance, and as such they become motions or forces especially in those individuals whose lust for life (“the essence of man itself”) cannot do without knowledge. These few will find in knowledge the fulfillment of their existence. (2)

Notes(1) You can find a Brunner link in the right sidebar of this blog under "Web Page Links."(2) Lothar Bickel, The Unity of Body and Mind pp. 164-165.

Awesome Korzybski Files Readers

Copyright Notice

Consider this blog under copyright. You may make use of this material under fair-use guidelines, but please remember to note where you got it from. Thanks.

About Bruce I. Kodish

I've received wide acknowledgment as a leading scholar-teacher of the korzybskian discipline of applied epistemology known as 'general semantics'. In 1998, with my wife Susan Presby Kodish, Ph.D., I received the Institute of General Semantics' prestigious J. Talbott Winchell Award. With"deep appreciation and warm thanks" the award acknowledged the Kodish's "...many contributions severally and together to the wider understanding of general semantics as authors, editors, teachers, leaders", and "their concern with the alleviation of social and individual problems, and their active interest in the on-going work in general semantics." I've written the first full-length biography of Alfred Korzybski, author of Manhood of Humanity and Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics. My book, Korzybski: A Biography, received the S.I. Hayakawa Book Prize in 2011. Although I am retiring this year after 36 years as a physical therapist, I continue a lively interest in corrective exercise and rehabilitation and have a part-time practice as a consultant and personal trainer specializing in the Alexander Technique of Posture-Movement Education.